A web publisher is an entity, such as person or an enterprise, that hosts web pages or websites that can be accessed over a network, such as the Internet. The publisher can monitor analytical data related to user visits and links to the publisher's web pages or websites. Example analytical data includes data related to domains and/or websites from which visitors arrived and to which the visitors departed; data related to keywords, e.g., search queries, that permitted identification of the publisher's web pages or websites; traffic patterns, e.g., navigation clicks, of visitors within the publisher's website; visitor actions, e.g., purchases, filling out of forms, etc. and other actions that a visitor may take in relation to the publisher's website.
The analysis of such analytical data can, for example, inform the publisher of how visitors found the publisher's website and how the visitors interacted with the publisher's website. With this understanding, the publisher can implement changes to increase revenue generation and/or improve the visitor experience. For example, a publisher can focus marketing resources on advertising campaigns, identify keywords that increase the likelihood that a user will visit the publisher's web site or web pages, identify the best location to place ads to increase revenue, identify other publishers as potential partners for cross-linking, and the like.
Determining the value derived from advertising campaigns can be challenging for a publisher to understand. For instance, the interaction of different advertising mechanisms, such as ad impressions, click-throughs, conversions, and the like, may be interdependent but conventional advertising mechanisms may not provide publishers with simple and intuitive methods to view such interdependencies such that the advertiser can adjust an advertising campaign as necessary to achieve desired results.